Yesterday, Zarah and I were feeling a little adrift. We'd been to Hollywood Boulevard, we'd been to Universal Studios. But it all felt hollow somehow. We wanted to get out there and see the real Los Angeles: the grimy, dirty Californian Dream slowly ebbing away.
Nah, I'm just kidding. We went to Disneyland.
Upon hearing this, my mother declared that I was just a big child. But you know what? It was a lot of fun. And Zarah was finally able to get over her childhood fear of going on fast rides. By the end of the day she was running to line up for more, having realised that the contraptions that so terrified her as a child weren't actually so frightening: once you realise that the boulder in the Indiana Jones ride isn't actually going to hit you, the sting comes out of the tail a little.
I'm not going to recap everything we did; we managed to power through a fair bit in the few hours that we had there. But there were some highlights. The Haunted Mansion was redone in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme which was pretty cool. And the faster rides we managed to get on were a lot of fun.
We got back to the hostel well into the night after a day well-spent. But it wasn't over. Despite our bodies crying out for sleep, we journeyed out to Burbank to meet up with Adam Haque (from Perth) and his girlfriend Izzy (from Los Angeles). We caught up with them at a great coffee shop called Priscilla's where Izzy works. Zarah was especially excited to hear that it had recently been a set for an episode of Desperate Housewives, and that Izzy had also appeared as an extra. We all went out to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant, which was great. We didn't even come close to finishing our meals though - American serving sizes take some getting used to. Adam and Izzy dropped us back at the hostel where we got ready to leave the next morning. It was great catching up with Adam and meeting Izzy. Always nice to see familiar faces when you're halfway around the world.
Our journey out of LA was fraught with difficulty. We got lucky when a shuttle happened to come by the hostel - it turned out the front desk had booked us on the wrong day, and we would have sat out the front for ages with no one coming for us. We got to LAX and checked in - or so we thought. An inspection of the baggage tags 10 minutes later revealed that I had been given a boarding pass for a Mr. Greg Barnes. Zarah submitted to an extensive metal detection process rather than remove her bobby pins. And I got conned into buying a $5 orange juice by the crafty people at Starbucks. But we got onboard the flight okay, and it took off on time.
Once on the plane, we met a nice woman named Melissa who works for Google. She gave us some tips on what to do and see in San Francisco, and even offered to show us around which we might take her up on.
Getting into San Francisco and to the hostel was more or less painless, even if hauling all our stuff through the sloping streets wasn't particularly easy. We had grand plans for the evening that evaporated soon after we realised just how tired we were - so we had dinner, looked around Union Square and did some laundry. Tomorrow, though, will be more exciting once we're both rested and refreshed.
As always, expect more in one or two days. Otherwise, I hope everyone is well and having a great summer!
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